IntelliJ IDEA 2016.3 GA: Java 8 and ES6, Debugger and UI improvements, and a Ton More

Please meet IntelliJ IDEA 2016.3, the third massive IDE update planned for this year. Two years ago we used to have one major release per year. Now we have three and all feature-rich – not to mention tons of minor bugfix releases.

Read below to see the highlights of this update:

Java

Refactoring to Java 8. Since Java 8 was released, IntelliJ IDEA has been providing inspections that help write correct and idiomatic Java 8. With this update, we’ve gone further and extended our existing inspections to support non-trivial cases. Now, if you press Alt+Enter inside a non-trivial for-loop, the IDE will prompt you to replace it with an chain of stream API calls. The quick-fix will leverage count, sum, flatMap, map, mapToInt, collect, filter, anyMatch, findFirst, toArray, and other APIs if necessary. Also, when appropriate, the IDE will prompt you to replace certain code with Map.computeIfAbsent, Collections.removeIf or ThreadLocal.withInitial. (Note: a similar quick-fix is now available for Kotlin as well.)

Scala

Scala.js. The Scala plugin now provides code completion and quick navigation for js.Dynamic–based on fields and methods defined in JavaScript libraries or project files.

Scala Meta. Another major plugin improvement is support for scala.meta. IntelliJ IDEA supports new-style macro annotations and provides coding assistance for scala.meta quasiquotes.

JVM Debugger

Class-level Watches. This powerful new feature lets you define Watch expressions on the class level. These watches appear as extra fields of the class but their value is evaluated based on your expressions. An expression for class-level watches is defined in the context of the class.

Memory View. This is a new plugin that lets you explore objects in the JVM heap during a debug session. It shows you the total number of objects in the heap grouped by their class name. As you step over the code, the Diff column shows how this number changes between debugger stops. Double-click a class name to open a dialog with instances of this class. If needed, the plugin is also capable of tracking stacktraces for chosen classes.

User Interface

Parameter Hints. This new feature, enabled by default, shows the names of method parameters for passed values that are literals or nulls. These hints make code more readable. If you find hints redundant for certain methods, you can tell the IDE to hide hints for these methods.

Semantic Highlighting, previously introduced in KDevelop and some other IDEs, is now available in IntelliJ IDEA. It extends the standard syntax highlighting with unique colors for each parameter and local variable. This feature is disabled by default but can be found in Settings → Editor → Colors & Fonts → Language Defaults → Semantic highlighting.

Flat file Icons. We’ve also reworked file icons for a more flat design. While the new icons may look unusual, we believe they feel more sharp and less noisy.

Build Tools

Delegate IDE build/run actions to Gradle. Allows you to delegate the native IntelliJ IDEA Build, Build Artifacts (both WAR and EAR) and Run actions to Gradle. When this option is enabled, all these actions are performed via the corresponding Gradle tasks. The Runaction is delegated to the dynamic Gradle JavaExec task configured according to the run configuration. To enable this option, check Settings → Build, Execution, Deployment → Build Tools → Gradle → Runner → Delegate IDE build/run actions to Gradle.

Gradle Composite Builds. New powerful option that lets you substitute any of your Gradle dependencies with another project. This feature requires Gradle 3.1 or higher.

Polyglot Maven. A set of Maven extensions that allows the POM file to be written in Groovy, Scala, Ruby and other languages. While project import works for any language, coding assistance within POM files is available only for Groovy.

VCS

Git/Mercurial Log. The Log viewer has been reworked some more, this time mainly to improve its ergonomics and speed. Commit details have moved to the right, giving you more screen space. Commit messages in the table are now aligned and thus more readable. Labels have been moved to the right and are now displayed in a more elegant way. Filter values now persist between IDE restarts. For Git, searching via the Text, Author and Path filters is now much faster.

Merge and Diff. The Merge dialog now show a Resolve icon on the left side of the Editor when the IDE is capable of resolving the conflict automatically. We’ve added line markers to the dialog to indicate actual changes to the base revision. Last but not least, both Diff and Merge now provide full syntax highlighting for non-local revisions.

Managing Remotes. Now, the IDE provides an interface for managing Git remotes for every repo in the project.

JavaScript

ECMAScript 6. IntelliJ IDEA now reports all var declarations and helps replace them with let or const declarations, depending on recognized value semantics. For all require() calls, the IDE now provides a quick-fix that replaces them with import statements. For function calls and prototype chains, the IDE provides a quick-fix that replaces them with class statements. Other improvements include better support for destructuring assignments, and default exports.

TypeScript. TypeScript gets a more accurate rename refactoring for overridden methods, and a quick-fix to shorten import statements.

Flow. Now, when you set the JavaScript version to Flow, the IDE reports problems in the files annotated with “// @flow” on the fly.

Application Servers

TomEE 7. The support for TomEE has been updated to its major version.

Liberty. Loose applications are now supported and can be run from the IDE. To run a loose application, open the Deployment tab of your WebSphere Run configuration and select the loose application XML file–instead of an artifact.

React Native

Debugger. Now you can run and debug React Native apps without leaving IntelliJ IDEA.

Android

Blueprint. A new mode in the Designer that hides all of the visuals from views and shows only their outlines. You can choose to have it side by side with the Designer.

Constraint Layout. This is a new layout manager which allows you to create large and complex layouts with a flat view hierarchy. It’s similar to Relative Layout in that all views are laid out according to relationships between sibling views and the parent layout, but it’s more flexible and easier to use.

Instant Run. The update has brought many stability and reliability improvements to Instant Run. If you have previously disabled it, the Android team encourages you to re-enable it.

Also before/after build/rebuild task activation doesn’t work if “delegation to Gradle” is enabled. But I think the feature is useless for that mode and “before/after build/rebuild” should be unavailable for setup.

I changed my javascript code to use ECMAScript 6. The editor tells me that ‘var’ used instead of ‘let’ or ‘const’. That’s good. When I change my ‘var’ to a ‘let’, the ‘let’ is properly syntax colored in a JS file, but NOT in a JSP file inside the script tags. The var was syntax colored in both JSP and JS files, just the new ‘let’ is not. ‘const’ is properly syntax colored in either case, though.

It seems there’s a small problem with JSON(B) fields in the table view. I got Postgres 9.5 and can’t insert/edit fields via the editor. I tried the “latest” offical driver “postgresql-9.4-1201.jdbc4” and the current one from the website “postgresql-9.4-1212”. With both errors I get

[42804] ERROR: column “fields_json” is of type json but expression is of type character varying Hinweis: You will need to rewrite or cast the expression. Position: 85

Three updates to ide a year is not very impressive when others gets multiple updates a month.. And eery time new features. Intellij is starting to be dinosaur which can’t move fast enough in the modern world.

Great job as always, but the subscription payment wasn’t very smooth. My billing date was Dec 1, and I paid with PayPal. The day before I checked that the subscription was active. On Dec 2 I got a message from IDE that you subscription has expired and you may no longer use the product. The funny part was that I could actually continue using it. But as a loyal customer, I logged into my JetBrains account and paid the subscription fee manually. Not a big deal, just was surprised that I wasn’t billed automatically.

Is there a way to make parameter hints respect line character limit? We have a weird 100 characters per line limit, and because of parameter hints, I can’t really see if the line is within the limit or not.